Chapter 2 - CHAPTERS 6 TO 10
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The blinding halogen beams cut through the driving rain, pinning Luca and me against the side of the Mercedes van.
My heart seized. In this desolate pocket of the South Side, at nearly nine o’clock on a stormy Thursday night, an unmarked SUV blocking an alleyway meant only one thing: violence.
“Get inside the van, Natalie,” Luca ordered, his voice dropping into a deadly, calm command. “Get on the floorboard behind the front seats and stay down.”
“Mr. Moretti, who is that?” I cried, my boots slipping on the slick gravel.
“Get in!” he barked.
I scrambled through the passenger door, tumbling onto the rubber floor mat behind the leather seats just as Luca reached beneath his wet driver’s seat. When his hand re-emerged, he was holding a customized matte-black semi-automatic handgun. He racked the slide with a crisp, practiced motion and stepped between the open van door and the oncoming vehicle.
The black SUV stopped twenty yards away.
Its front doors opened simultaneously. Two men stepped out into the pouring rain, wearing dark waterproof coats with collars pulled high. Neither drew a weapon, but their hands remained suspiciously close to their pockets.
“Moretti!” the taller man shouted over the sound of the storm. “Stand down! We’re not here to exchange lead!”
Luca didn't lower his weapon. His stance was rock-solid, his arm extended with lethal precision. “Identify yourselves before I put two rounds through your engine block and two more through your chests.”
The shorter man raised both hands, palm-out, stepping into the edge of the van’s headlights. In his right hand, he held a leather credential wallet flipped open to reveal a gold shield.
“Cook County Special Prosecutions, Organized Crime Division,” the man shouted. “I’m Investigator Frank Ramirez. We’ve been running an undercover wiretap on Senator Arthur Bellini’s campaign finance accounts for six months.”
Luca didn't flinch, nor did he lower his pistol. “You’re far out of your jurisdiction on a Thursday night, Ramirez. Arthur’s jurisdiction is the Gold Coast. Why are you tracking my transport van?”
Ramirez took a cautious step forward, wiping rain from his eyes. “Because forty-five minutes ago, our wiretap intercepted an urgent encrypted call from Senator Bellini to a private security contractor in Gary, Indiana. Bellini realized his daughter lost an encrypted ledger key somewhere on your property or along your route. He put out a five-hundred-thousand-dollar cash bounty for the recovery of that titanium flash drive—dead or alive.”
A chill deeper than the freezing sleet ran down my spine. The small metal drive I had picked up from the muddy gravel was a death sentence.
Luca slowly lowered the weapon to his side, though his grip never relaxed. “You want the ledger?”
“We want Arthur Bellini,” Ramirez said, his voice hard. “He’s been washing extortion money through charity shell corporations and buying off municipal judges for a decade. But without that hardware encryption key, every file we have is useless gibberish. We know you hate our guts, Moretti. We know what your family does. But tonight, Bellini tried to rob a homeless shelter that bears your mother’s name. Let us bury him legally.”
Luca stared at the investigator for three agonizing seconds. The wind whipped his wet shirt against his torso.
“The ledger stays in my possession until I verify the contents,” Luca said, his voice brooking no argument. “Meet me at the Chicago Riverfront Club at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Bring your federal counterparts from the Department of Justice. If the data matches what I suspect, I’ll hand you Arthur Bellini on a silver platter. If you try to cross me before then, Ramirez, neither your badge nor your division will save you.”
Investigator Ramirez looked at Luca, swallowed visibly, and nodded once. “Ten o’clock. Don't be late, Moretti. Bellini knows he’s cornered. A cornered rat with forty years of political connections will burn this city down before he goes to federal prison.”
Ramirez and his partner climbed back into their SUV, shifted into reverse, and backed out of the alleyway, disappearing into the dark, rain-swept avenue.
Luca climbed into the driver’s seat of the van, slammed the heavy door, and locked it. He slipped his gun into the holster concealed beneath his dashboard.
He turned around in his seat to look down at me.
“Are you hurt, Natalie?”
I sat up slowly, brushing damp strands of hair out of my face, my hands trembling as the adrenaline began to ebb. “I’m okay, sir. I’m fine.”
He looked at my shivering frame, reached into the back, and grabbed his dry cashmere overcoat that had been hanging from a hook. He draped it gently over my shoulders. The coat was warm, thick, and carried the faint, comforting scent of cedar and expensive sandalwood.
“You’ve had enough terror for one evening,” he said softly. “I’m taking you home.”
“Mr. Moretti, what about Dominic?” I asked, clutching the lapels of his heavy coat around myself. “Matteo is holding him at the mansion. If Dominic gave the Bellinis the combination to your mother’s safe... what were they really looking for?”
Luca’s expression turned grim as he put the van into drive and pulled onto the deserted street.
“Money was only part of it,” Luca said, his eyes narrowing into cold calculation. “My mother didn't just run soup kitchens, Natalie. For twenty years, she served as a confidante to women across this city—the wives of politicians, the mistresses of judges, the daughters of councilmen who suffered in silence behind closed doors. Before she died, she kept a personal handwritten journal in that safe. A ledger of secrets that could dismantle half the political establishment in Chicago.”
He glanced at me through the rearview mirror.
“Arthur Bellini doesn't just want to avoid bankruptcy. He wants that journal. Because if those pages ever see the light of day, he won't just lose an election. He will spend the rest of his natural life behind the bars of a federal penitentiary.”
The engine roared as Luca pushed the van through the empty, waterlogged boulevards, heading north toward the lake.
Forty minutes later, the massive limestone silhouette of the Moretti estate emerged from the darkness. The grand estate was eerily quiet now. The string quartet had long since fled; the valet attendants were gone; only the steady amber perimeter lights illuminated the manicured lawns and the rain-slicked driveway.
Three black Cadillac Escalades were parked in a defensive semi-circle outside the main service entrance.
As soon as our van came to a halt, Matteo Rossi stepped out from under the covered portico. He was a broad-shouldered man with a scarred jaw, wearing a dark trench coat, his hand resting conspicuously beneath his left lapel.
Luca killed the engine, stepped out into the drizzle, and walked toward his enforcer. I followed closely behind, still wrapped in Luca's oversized cashmere coat.
“Is he secure?” Luca asked.
“Down in the wine cellar,” Matteo replied, his voice gruff. “He tried to pull a Glock from his ankle holster when we approached him by the guardhouse. We had to break two of his fingers to take it away from him.”
“Did he talk?”
“He sang like a canary the second we mentioned taking his mother’s nursing home off the foundation’s payroll,” Matteo spat. “He confessed. Arthur Bellini offered him two million dollars in an offshore account to open the study safe tonight during the distraction of the engagement party.”
“And did Vanessa get into the safe?” Luca asked, his voice dead and terrifyingly quiet.
Matteo hesitated. He looked past Luca, his gaze briefly meeting mine before returning to his boss.
“She got into the safe, Luca. But she didn't find the journal.”
Luca’s eyes widened slightly. “What do you mean she didn't find it?”
“It wasn't in the wall cavity behind Elena’s portrait,” Matteo said, leaning in closer. “Someone emptied that safe forty-eight hours ago. The cash was gone, the bearer bonds were gone, and the journal was gone.”
Luca froze on the stone steps.
“That’s impossible,” Luca muttered. “No one knew the secondary override sequence except me.”
Then, slowly, deliberately, Matteo turned his head and looked directly at me.
“There’s one other person who had a master key to that wing on Wednesday morning, boss,” Matteo said, his voice dropping into a razor-sharp accusation. “The maid who cleans the private gallery.”
Luca turned around slowly, his piercing gray eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that sucked the air straight out of my lungs.
My heart plummeted into an icy abyss.
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“Natalie,” Luca whispered, stepping toward me as the rain fell between us like a curtain of steel needles. “What did you do with my mother’s journal?”
MY BILLIONAIRE MAFIA FIANCÉ CAUGHT ME DUMPING CHARITY FOOD FOR SICK CHILDREN TO IMPRESS CELEBRITIES, BUT WHEN HE UNCOVERED THE SECOND FORGED EMAIL IN MY MOTHER'S SAFE, THE WEDDING WAS CANCELED ON LIVE TELEVISION!
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